Lee's Ironic Devotion to Communism

            From the beginning of Libra, when Lee is just a child, to the end, after Lee dies, we see that Lee goes through many different stages in his life. First, he is just a kid living with his mother, then he joins the marines, goes to Russia, comes back, and so on. DeLillo makes these stages clear by giving Lee a different identity in each one – he goes by Lee, Ozzie the Rabbit, Alek, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc. There are two characteristics of his identity, however, that stay constant throughout the entire book. First, he studies and supports Communism, and he is fascinated with visiting communist countries like Russia and Cuba. Second, he always either tries to distance himself from others or ends up in a situation where he is alone. The irony here is that these two things conflict with each other. Communism is all about unity, communal well-being, and sharing with one’s comrades. Distancing oneself from others is therefore discouraged, and acting on one’s own is in fact a much more capitalist notion than a communist one.

            These two conflicting characteristics of Lee are established concretely at the beginning of the book when Lee is perusing the catalog at the library. The books that jump out at him are Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. He learns about “the workers, the class struggle, the exploitation of wage labor” (34). He reads about Trotsky, and learns that he lived in exile in the Bronx. He seems to almost worship Lenin and Stalin as communist leaders, saying that “these were men who lived in isolation for long periods, lived close to death through long winters in exile or prison, feeling history in the room, waiting for the moment when it would surge through the walls, taking them with it” (34). Despite his obvious devotion, though, he explains that the only reason he reads these books is that “the tougher the books, the more firmly he fixed a distance between himself and others” (34). I find it extremely surprising that Lee, reading about the unification of the working class and other such major communist principles doesn’t even consider the fact that the reason for his interest in Communism is the least communist thing at all – he supports it solely because he wants to be special, different from his friends and colleagues. Indeed, when he finally goes to Moscow, he is not treated with the hero’s welcome he expects. Everyone is communist there, so he is not special at all, and this disappoints him quite a bit.

What differentiates Dana from her fellow slaves?

            One of the most interesting things about Kindred was how quickly Dana adjusted to being a slave. Even though both Kevin and Dana agreed that they would only act like slave-master and slave in order to fit in on the Weylin plantation, both of them started to develop into the roles they were playing, and it happened shockingly fast. Almost immediately when Dana is first pulled into the past, she is attacked by a white man, and has to fight him off with her knife. At first, she is reluctant and can’t make herself use the knife, but she quickly realizes that the environment in 1819 is much more hostile than that of 1976, and that such liberties as not trying to permanently injure her attacker could not be taken. Indeed, this trend of her continuing to adopt the behaviors of a black person in the south in the 19^th century continues throughout the book, and by the end, she seems at first glance almost indistinguishable from her fellow slaves.

However, there is one major characteristic that Dana lacks: the “survival of the fittest” mentality that is required in order to deal with slavery (of course, some amount of cooperation and support is needed, but one has to have the strength to do what is best for oneself, or one won’t be able to escape the shackles of slavery). When she first comes back to 1976, for example, she knows that she needs to get more supplies in case she is pulled back again, but she is afraid that if she is pulled back while in her car, it will be left driverless and would be dangerous to passerby. Later, when Kevin suggests that she kill Rufus, she refuses, saying that even though it would stop her from having to go back in time, the slaves on the Weylin plantation could be sold and separated. This idea of restricting oneself from doing something because it could possibly harm someone else is something that I don’t believe most of the slaves would consider. After years of hard work and brutality, they would jump at any opportunity to free themselves. Indeed, they often don’t even consider the impacts of their actions on themselves. When Alice wanted to try to escape with her children, for example, it took Dana a long time to convince her that it was too dangerous, and Alice didn’t even think about the possibility that if Rufus found her gone, he might have gotten angry and tried to rape Dana instead. Similarly, when Dana tried to escape, it was a slave who noticed and tipped Tom Weylin off. The slave knew that any opportunity to get some increased treatment was valuable, even at the expense of another slave. Granted, he was yelled at by the slave women, but it’s clear that years of hard work had driven this “survival of the fittest” mentality into him.

I think it is for this reason that Dana said at the end of the book that she wouldn’t have survived as a slave – she just didn’t have the resolve and the ruthlessness to deal with it. Personally, though, I see this more as a positive than a negative. Even though it might have completed her transition into slavery, I think it is important that she managed to retain at least some of her selflessness, and it made her a much more sympathetic character.

Are we biased against Kevin?

            Aside from Dana and Rufus, Kevin is one of the most important characters in Kindred, and without his help, Dana would probably not have been able to mentally deal with her first few trips back to 1819. Surprisingly, however, considering Dana’s dependence on him at the beginning of the book, relatively brief exposure to segregated life on the Weylin plantation seemed to pull them apart. Consciously, of course, they both maintained the same views they had as before, but unconsciously, Kevin began to make remarks with undertones that associated him with the Weylins, while Dana, who probably would have recognized the truth on the surface of his statements and not pressed him for the deeper meaning in 1976, now finds them hard to stomach, having been placed in a situation where she is by definition opposed to the Weylins and white supremacy.

            The first major instance of this is when Kevin mentions how interesting it could be to go to the west and experience the old western culture. Dana is much more cynical. “‘West,’ [she] said bitterly. ‘That’s where they’re doing it to the Indians instead of the blacks!’” (97). Now, after reading Dana’s scathing retort, I originally felt like Kevin had just made one of his daft comments that shows how much he has been changed by living alongside the Weylins, but on second thought, I think it is actually exactly the opposite. Kevin’s idea to leave the south and go west is perfectly natural, considering that Dana currently has to deal with the inhumane treatment of African-Americans under the system of white supremacy, whereas in the west oppression of African-Americans was not nearly as bad. In addition, as Kevin says, it would be quite an experience, and to Dana’s point that that was where they were “doing it to the Indians,” just going to the west wouldn’t change this fact at all. Indeed, I think Dana’s retort was more a reflection of her frustration at being thrown into the world of slavery and white supremacy than anything else.

            Kevin, of course, is not without fault either, and has clearly been changed by living on the Weylin plantation. When Dana says she is teaching Nigel how to read and write, for example, he responds by saying he sees “Weylin was right about educated slaves” (101). While this statement is clearly true – Tom Weylin didn’t want to educate his slaves for fear they might forge papers securing their freedom – it associates him with Weylin in a way that Dana highly disapproves of, and draws attention to the fact that they have been separated more and more because of their racial status.

            Overall, I think that both Dana and Kevin have changed in understandable ways, and that it is hard for us to criticize either of them. Although Butler writes the book in a way that creates a lot of sympathy for Dana, while causing us to be somewhat suspicious of Kevin, I would argue that this a bias we need to overcome, and that both Dana and Kevin have been equally affected by their lives in 1819 through no fault of their own.

Do the Tralfamadorians Justify the Structure of Slaughterhouse-Five?

            For a book whose main purpose is to describe the bombing of Dresden, a distinctly historical rather than fictional event, in a way that persuades people that war is an unnecessary evil, Slaughterhouse-Five has a lot of unexpected quirks. At first sight, the weirdest and most blatantly fictional of these is the subplot about Billy Pilgrim’s kidnapping by the Tralfamadorians, a race of mysterious green aliens that is the source of pretty much all of the wisdom in the book. Ironically, however, it is this subplot that makes the book’s metanarrative of Vonnegut thinking back to his experiences in Dresden all the more real, in my opinion.

            First, consider a traditional war story. The narrative’s chronology would be strictly linear, events would be described in vivid detail, and the hero would take would take some brave, selfless action at the end. Even more importantly, the story would be told from the perspective of either the hero or a narrator who can’t see the future, and as a result, there would be a lot more suspense. In Slaughterhouse-Five, however, Vonnegut is telling his story solely through his own memories, and so he knows what will happen after the events he is describing, allowing him to jump back and forth in time. Indeed, the chronology of the book is very reflective of one’s train of thought when trying to remember something. You don’t start at some moment and relive events linearly as they unfold; rather, you make connections in your mind between memories at different points in time, and eventually these connections prompt you to remember enough details about an event to get a general picture of what happened. The Tralfamadorians are simply Vonnegut’s way of explaining the odd chronological structure of the narrative without breaking the fourth wall. He first gives them the authority of being a superior species that understands the fourth dimension, making sure that we as humans don’t have the means to contradict them, and then lets them explain that all moments exist at the same time, allowing Billy to get unstuck in time and travel from one to another.

Another consequence of Vonnegut writing in Billy’s future is that it is difficult for him to make the novel suspenseful. He already knows what will happen and his memories of events during WWII are colored by this, so he can’t describe them as if Billy doesn’t know what will happen either. Once again, he justifies this by allowing Billy to get unstuck in time and see the future, and by having the Tralfamadorians tell Billy that universe is deterministic. Since Billy knows that the future is set in stone and there is nothing he can do to change it, his apathy and lack of heroism makes a lot more sense – why do something selfless when you know that it won’t change anything? One might as well enjoy life as much as possible and not worry about the future.

            Throughout this book, we see a very interesting mix between science fiction and reality. By merging these two seemingly separate historical and fictional areas, Vonnegut is able to strengthen his metanarrative, leading to a very unorthodox and thought-provoking anti-war novel.

Is there really anything wrong with the Wallflower Order?

            Mumbo Jumbo, by Ishmael Reed, takes a very unique and critical view of western civilization, and claims that as we move away from our roots and focus on the advancement of technology and so-called “progress,” we lose some of our human spirit. It suggests that we live in an almost “Brave New World-esque” culture, devoid of passion, in which any sort of spontaneity or excitement, such as that embodied by Jes Grew, is not only frowned upon, but feared. This opposition to Jes Grew is led by the Wallflower Order, an organization that seeks to keep Jes Grew in check and maintain order in society. In the book, Reed portrays this Wallflower Order as the villain, and those who welcome Jes Grew, such as PaPa LaBas, as heroes. In my opinion, however, Reed’s argument goes a little too far.

Consider, for example, his description of the headquarters of the Wallflower Order in Chapter 17. “You have nothing real up here. Everything is polyurethane, Polystyrene, Lucite, Plexiglas, acrylate, Mylar, Teflon, phenolic, polycarbonate. A gallimaufry of synthetic materials. Wood you hate. Nothing to remind you of the Human Seed” (62). To begin, this idea of the “Human Seed” has the same problem as the slogan “Make America Great Again” – during the time of the Human Seed, we were hunter-gatherers who had to fight tooth and nail for survival, and we never had time to develop the culture of music, dance, and art that Jes Grew represents. It was only through technology and developments in agriculture that we were able to amass a surplus of food, giving us enough free time away from the fields to start the wave of Jes Grew. Secondly, the “gallimaufry of synthetic materials” Reed lists deserves praise rather than criticism. Just as the ancients used the resources they had to build buildings out of wood, we are using our resources to build buildings out of the most effective materials possible. Indeed, there is nothing natural about living in a wooden house – hypothetically, if we told some aliens that we sheltered under a plant cut into a bunch of pieces and stuck together with mud, they would laugh. We built wooden houses for millennia, however, simply because they were the most prudent and effective form of shelter. Similarly, our current buildings are made out of the best materials we have at our disposal. Whether these are synthetic or not is a non-issue, and while we don’t hate wood, it would be unwise to use it, given that we have better materials at hand.

The end of this description, from my point of view, is just as shortsighted. Reed says that “the Atonists got rid of their spirit 1000s of years ago with Him (…). Death will have taken over. Why is it Death you like? Because then no 1 will keep you up all night with all that racket dancing and singing. The next morning you can get up and build, drill, progress putting up skyscrapers and … and … and … working and stuff. You know? Keeping busy” (62 – 63). First of all, the idea that we work just to “keep busy” is ridiculous. I’m sure that Reed enjoyed his work as an author, and that he didn’t write Mumbo Jumbo just to keep busy. Indeed, many people are truly passionate about their work, and they get the same surge of excitement from reading a thought-provoking article or making a surprising discovery as one might get from catching Jes Grew. I find it extremely naïve to say that just because someone doesn’t show their excitement on the outside by singing or dancing, they have no spirit and are essentially dead. The second half of Reed’s statement, where he criticizes “progress” as being pointless, and says that doing things like building skyscrapers is progress solely for the sake of progress, is just as bad, but perhaps excusable. Reed wasn’t to know when he wrote the book in 1972 that the modern analog of Jes Grew is a result of technology, and that the discoveries of those soulless Atonist scientists he just adores would lead to something called the internet, to YouTube, to iTunes, and so on. Indeed, in hindsight, we see that it was actually the “progress” so loathed by those who got caught up in Jes Grew that led to music being so widespread in this day and age, and that opened up the western world to cultures all across the globe.            Mumbo Jumbo, by Ishmael Reed, takes a very unique and critical view of western civilization, and claims that as we move away from our roots and focus on the advancement of technology and so-called “progress,” we lose some of our human spirit. It suggests that we live in an almost “Brave New World-esque” culture, devoid of passion, in which any sort of spontaneity or excitement, such as that embodied by Jes Grew, is not only frowned upon, but feared. This opposition to Jes Grew is led by the Wallflower Order, an organization that seeks to keep Jes Grew in check and maintain order in society. In the book, Reed portrays this Wallflower Order as the villain, and those who welcome Jes Grew, such as PaPa LaBas, as heroes. In my opinion, however, Reed’s argument goes a little too far.

Consider, for example, his description of the headquarters of the Wallflower Order in Chapter 17. “You have nothing real up here. Everything is polyurethane, Polystyrene, Lucite, Plexiglas, acrylate, Mylar, Teflon, phenolic, polycarbonate. A gallimaufry of synthetic materials. Wood you hate. Nothing to remind you of the Human Seed” (62). To begin, this idea of the “Human Seed” has the same problem as the slogan “Make America Great Again” – during the time of the Human Seed, we were hunter-gatherers who had to fight tooth and nail for survival, and we never had time to develop the culture of music, dance, and art that Jes Grew represents. It was only through technology and developments in agriculture that we were able to amass a surplus of food, giving us enough free time away from the fields to start the wave of Jes Grew. Secondly, the “gallimaufry of synthetic materials” Reed lists deserves praise rather than criticism. Just as the ancients used the resources they had to build buildings out of wood, we are using our resources to build buildings out of the most effective materials possible. Indeed, there is nothing natural about living in a wooden house – hypothetically, if we told some aliens that we sheltered under a plant cut into a bunch of pieces and stuck together with mud, they would laugh. We built wooden houses for millennia, however, simply because they were the most prudent and effective form of shelter. Similarly, our current buildings are made out of the best materials we have at our disposal. Whether these are synthetic or not is a non-issue, and while we don’t hate wood, it would be unwise to use it, given that we have better materials at hand.

The end of this description, from my point of view, is just as shortsighted. Reed says that “the Atonists got rid of their spirit 1000s of years ago with Him (…). Death will have taken over. Why is it Death you like? Because then no 1 will keep you up all night with all that racket dancing and singing. The next morning you can get up and build, drill, progress putting up skyscrapers and … and … and … working and stuff. You know? Keeping busy” (62 – 63). First of all, the idea that we work just to “keep busy” is ridiculous. I’m sure that Reed enjoyed his work as an author, and that he didn’t write Mumbo Jumbo just to keep busy. Indeed, many people are truly passionate about their work, and they get the same surge of excitement from reading a thought-provoking article or making a surprising discovery as one might get from catching Jes Grew. I find it extremely naïve to say that just because someone doesn’t show their excitement on the outside by singing or dancing, they have no spirit and are essentially dead. The second half of Reed’s statement, where he criticizes “progress” as being pointless, and says that doing things like building skyscrapers is progress solely for the sake of progress, is just as bad, but perhaps excusable. Reed wasn’t to know when he wrote the book in 1972 that the modern analog of Jes Grew is a result of technology, and that the discoveries of those soulless Atonist scientists he just adores would lead to something called the internet, to YouTube, to iTunes, and so on. Indeed, in hindsight, we see that it was actually the “progress” so loathed by those who got caught up in Jes Grew that led to music being so widespread in this day and age, and that opened up the western world to cultures all across the globe.

WHAT IS HISTORY (according to one of the most widely respected dictionaries in the world)?

            According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “a history is a work in which each movement, action, or chain of events is dealt with as a whole and pursued to its natural termination or to a convenient stopping place, as distinct from annals, in which events are simply recorded in divisions of a year or other limited period, or a chronicle, in which events are presented as a straightforward continuous narrative.” This is clearly a good description of how one goes about writing a history; in order to understand and learn from history, one has to group together and analyze a long series of events, determine some sort of general link between them, and formulate an argument from a certain perspective. If we were simply to treat our history as a set of disjoint events without any causal link, we would learn nothing of significance or practicality. Indeed, one of the main reasons we study history is to understand what led to success and what led to failure, and to try to apply that to our current situation. If we are completely objective and consider only historical “facts” (ignoring that it can be argued whether such historical facts exist in the first place), we can’t apply anything we learn to our present.

            In light of our recent class discussions, however, it seems that as soon as we leave the realm of fact and impose our own narrative upon the data we are attempting to understand, we are taking our first step away from true history and toward fiction. Because of the inescapable bias inherent in human nature, as well as the daunting volume of historical events that one must sift through, our understanding becomes flawed, and our arguments do not take into account the full picture. If we look back at the OED’s definition of history from a post-modernist perspective, for instance, we see that it is surprisingly vague and subjective. “Each (…) chain of events is (…) pursued to its natural termination or to a convenient stopping place.” This notion of a chain of events having a natural, inherent termination or stopping place seems ridiculous. I don’t go about my life until I decide I have reached a convenient stopping place and then lie down and die. Leaving this aside, who decides where this stopping place is? Is it the people living at the time? This seems crazy as well; consider the 2016 election – we have been talking about it non-stop, it’s inconceivable that we will just stop as soon as 2017 rolls around. Is it the historian, then, who decides when to stop? Possibly, but even this seems odd. If the consequences of some event continue on for a long time, a historian can’t simply ignore any consequence that occurs after a certain moment in time – this would lead to a biased and incomplete history. On the other hand, the amount of history one must analyze to understand every perspective is far too vast for any one person to fully absorb, so one must stop somewhere. Is it really the case, then, as the OED claims, that there exists some “natural stopping point?” Is there some moment inherent and pre-defined in our history that we can point to, where the chain of causation ends, and man simply moves on from the series of events we are studying? To me, this seems like the most ridiculous claim of all.

            The problem, in my opinion, with the OED’s definition of a history is that it narrows it down to a single argument from a single person. Our understanding of history is not limited to this person’s perspective; it is the conglomeration of everyone’s understanding with each time period, perspective, and bias represented. One can only glean a true picture of our history by understanding how all the arguments fit together, and how each perspective compliments each other.

Postmodern Cosmology

Since the beginning of the semester, we have discussed the transition from modernism to postmodernism with regard to our culture – we talked about changing trends in literature, art, music, entertainment, etc. One thing that I found extremely striking, which we did not touch upon in class, was the surprising number of parallels with science and technology. In spite of the fact that science and literature seem diametrically opposite, some of the most transformative and innovative concepts in science, such as quantum mechanics and space travel, led to changes in our fundamental understanding of the structure of reality that mirror the cultural shifts leading to postmodernism.

            One of the key differences we discussed between modernism and postmodernism is the focus on epistemological versus ontological questions. Modernist writers and philosophers placed emphasis on experiencing and expressing the world from one’s own perspective. For them, our world was a constant universe defined by logical patterns, and we as humans should attempt to understand where we fit in it. Postmodernists, however, are more inclined to question which and what kind of world we live in, rather than simply taking the world for granted as being singular and all-compassing. One classic example of postmodernism would be Star Wars, which attempts to make sense of an alternate world with futuristic technology “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.” Interestingly, this concept of alternate realities with slightly different environments is essentially the same as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. For some particles, it is impossible to determine exactly how they will behave; rather, one can calculate a probability of each behavior. Some physicists speculate that every possible behavior actually does occur, except each one takes place in a different universe. Essentially, this means that every possible timeline of events occurs in some universe. One could then think of Star Wars simply as having taken place in a universe that branched off from our reality as humans there made huge breakthroughs in space travel.

            Just as authors can be classified as modernist or postmodernist based on their literature, so too can physicists based on their theories. Einstein, for example, was clearly a modernist. He was strongly against the inherent randomness of quantum mechanics, and spent his life trying to come up with a deterministic representation of the universe. One of his most famous quotes denouncing quantum mechanics was “God does not play dice with the universe,” a quote that goes hand in hand with the modernist idea that the behavior of our world is logically structured. The detective novel is the epitome of modernist literature for precisely this reason – given a crime and some evidence, the solution to the case is deterministic, and the protagonist will logically explore all the information he or she has to reach this solution.

            These parallels between physics and literature are clear evidence, in my opinion, that the seemingly distinct worlds of science and the humanities are actually fundamentally linked, and that any cultural shift of the magnitude of the change from modernism to postmodernism is caused by and affects both worlds.